Folks are getting pretty excited about the chance for a whole new experience on their smartphones with the new operating system by Canonical "Ubuntu touch". It was released a few weeks ago to the Nexus lineup including the GSM Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and Nexus 4. Developers quickly got to work porting it to various other devices. Last week developers Hashcode and Dhacker released their builds for several Motorola devices. Now the list has grown to include even more devices.

Some of the new devices include the Droid DNA, Asus Transformer lineup, Verizon and Sprint versions of the Galaxy Nexus, Kindle Fire 1st and 2nd gen, Kindle Fire HD 8.9", Motorola Xoom, Verizon Galaxy SIII, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, and many other devices. Before you get too excited just know that most of these builds are not fully functioning and should only be used as a preview of what is to come with Ubuntu. This is still pretty cool news to see developers jump on board to try to bring this new experience to the rest of us!

Just my opinion, but when the nexus phones got rid of physical and capacitive buttons for the on screen buttons, I could see them incorporating a similar touch ui that Ubuntu has.

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I'm embarassed to admit I'm such an Android loyalist (note: we're called "loyalists" -- fans of anything else are called "fanbois"!) that I honestly wouldn't recognize the Ubuntu (mobile) UI if I saw it, but is this assumption correct: would Android "switching" to the Ubuntu style not involve a relatively large design shift, i.e., would that be a "wholesale" change? Or do you imagine it would be more incremental?

This whole issue raises an interesting question (how Google "borrows" other's solutions), which is probably off-topic, but here it goes...I find it fascinating that early versions (e.g., Eclair and Froyo) "screwed up" or left out so many essential features, that were immediately patched in by clever devs (e.g., apps 2 SD, toggling of data, switching between active apps, or more recently, Latitude functionality)...and then a version or two later, Google "surprisingly" bakes that feature into the OS. So I've wondered: if true, is this because

- Google wants to leave "gaps" in the OS for devs to fill (and thereby make money and build a clientele), or
- Google is lazy, and lets the clever devs engineer the solution "for free", or
- some other thin reason, e.g., limited development resources (really unlikely) or the ultra-cynical "don't put everything in one version or that leaves us nothing to improve" strategy

I'm embarassed to admit I'm such an Android loyalist (note: we're called "loyalists" -- fans of anything else are called "fanbois"!) that I honestly wouldn't recognize the Ubuntu (mobile) UI if I saw it, but is this assumption correct: would Android "switching" to the Ubuntu style not involve a relatively large design shift, i.e., would that be a "wholesale" change? Or do you imagine it would be more incremental?

This whole issue raises an interesting question (how Google "borrows" other's solutions), which is probably off-topic, but here it goes...I find it fascinating that early versions (e.g., Eclair and Froyo) "screwed up" or left out so many essential features, that were immediately patched in by clever devs (e.g., apps 2 SD, toggling of data, switching between active apps, or more recently, Latitude functionality)...and then a version or two later, Google "surprisingly" bakes that feature into the OS. So I've wondered: if true, is this because

- Google wants to leave "gaps" in the OS for devs to fill (and thereby make money and build a clientele), or
- Google is lazy, and lets the clever devs engineer the solution "for free", or
- some other thin reason, e.g., limited development resources (really unlikely) or the ultra-cynical "don't put everything in one version or that leaves us nothing to improve" strategy

-Matt

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It would be smart to basically let the devs full the holes for free...

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